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Over the years, Super Bowl Sunday has morphed into a national holiday, but we should be careful about what we celebrate.

When San Francisco meets Baltimore today, some fans will glory in the precision passes, the intricate plays, the balletic grace of the receivers and running backs.

Others, however, will take joy in the tackles that turn players into human bobble-heads, and it is that aspect of the game that should give us pause.

Football is a violent sport, but is it becoming too violent, a game tarnished by the thirst for blood that makes steel-cage matches so popular?

With players carted off on stretchers with alarming regularity, the question is distressingly relevant.

And it became more relevant with the recent report that Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide last spring, was determined to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease linked to athletes who absorb frequent blows to the head, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“The type of findings seen in Mr. Seau's brain have been recently reported in autopsies of individuals with exposures to repetitive head injury,” the N.I.H. said in a statement, “including ... athletes who have played contact sports, individuals with multiple concussions and veterans exposed to blast injury and other trauma.”

Following the release of the report, the family of the former star filed a complaint against the NFL, alleging that the league had a responsibility to alert players to the risk of neugological injury.

Football may be our most brutal sport, more brutal than boxing.

The NFL has addressed the issue by levying penalties — and suspensions — for helmet-to-helmet tackles. But much of the problem centers on the culture of violence in the NFL, and that includes coaches who fail to protect their players.

In a recent survey of 125 former NFL players conducted by The Sporting News, 115 reported suffering at least one concussion during their careers. And of those players, 76 listed at least one mental-health issue that could be linked to their head injuries.

Fining players for excessively violent hits is a good start. But it may be time for the league to start penalizing team officials who make their decisions based on the win-loss column. Victories are not worth the physical damage players suffer to achieve them.